On the heels of my first HD-DVD purchase in October, 2006 I decided to venture into Blu-ray waters when the Sony Playstation 3 was introduced.  For one thing, it wasn’t plagued with some of the problems of the very early Blu-ray players from other manufacturers and for another it was actually about half the price of Sony’s own dedicated Blu-ray player.  For under $600 one not only had a very capable Blu-ray player (and one that keeps getting better with each successive firmware upgrade) but a full fledged “Next-Gen” gaming device as well. The only gaming downside at this writing is the lack of new titles that take advantage of the computing and display power of the PS3.

This unit provides HDMI 1.3 1080p output and even decodes all the current HD Audio codecs available very competently. It truly provides a “one wire solution” connecting via the HDMI jack. One has a choice of using the game controller as a Blu-ray remote (not really as bad as one might think) or purchasing an optional “regular” Sony DVD remote.  The only slight inconvenience is that the control devices are of the Bluetooth variety. This makes it a bit of a challenge to incorporate them into universal remote macros which tend to be IR or UHF based.

As previously mentioned, firmware updates via wireless Internet have added features on a regular basis. With the introduction of Firmware Version 1.8 in May 2006 Sony has added some very attractive options.  Not only has the upscaling of SD DVDs been improved substantially (not an issue with me because I use an external video processor) but they have added 1080p upscaling of legacy PS1 and PS2 games. God of War looks like a next-gen game on the PS3.